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//  conservation  hampers  development  —  the  country  ought  to  knozv  it 

"CONSERVATION 
AS  PRACTISED 

A  Specific  Answer  to  a  Specific  Attack 


55 


WITH  A  FEW  WORDS  ON  THE  ALLEGED  WESTERN  DISCONTENT 
WITH  CONSERVATION 


BY 

GIFFORD   PINCHOT.    /^^-r- 

Reprinted  from  Pearson's  Magazine  for  May^  ^9^3 


FOLLOWED   BY 

CONSERVATION  AS  PRACTISED 

BY 

XD.  H.  THOMAS 

Reprinted  for  Comparison  from  the  fanuary  Number 


[Any  part   of   this  pamphlet  may  be 
reproduced  without  further  permission] 


NEW  YORK 
1913 


F   ^-  ^ 


Pt 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

Microsoft  Corporation 


ttp://www.archive.org/details/conservationasprOOpincrich 


BuMRoft  Ubmn 


''CONSERVATION 
AS  PRACTISEDV 

(^GIFFORD  PINCHOT 

THE  FOREMOST  CONSERVATIONIST  ANSWERS  CRITICISMS  OF  CONSERVATION  PRAC- 
TICE AND  TELLS  WHY  HE  THINKS  THE  PRACTICE  IS  FOR  THE  GOOD  OF  THE  MAJORITY 


There  is  a  French  proverb — Tell  me  who 
are  your  friends,  and  I  will  tell  you  who  you 
are  yourself.  With  equal  truth  it  might  be 
said  of  Conservation,  and  of  many  another  policy 
and  proposal — Tell  me  who  are  its  enemies, 
and  I  will  tell  you  whether  the  people  ought  to 
be  its  friends.  As  may  be  learned  from  yEsop's 
fable  of  The  Man,  his  Son,  and  the  Ass,  you 
cannot  please  everybody.  Moreover,  it  is  far 
from  wise  to  try. 

Of  those  who  are  not  pleased  with  Con- 
servation, it  may  be  said  in  general  that  there's 
a  reason, — a  reason  so  powerful  that  it  sup- 
plies the  motive  behind  one  of  the  most  careful 


PEARSON'S   MAGAZINE 


and  assiduous  campaigns  of  near  truth  in  re- 
cent American  publicity .  It  is  small  wonder 
that  this  campaign,  plausible  enough  to  deceive 
the  very  elect,  should  have  misled  even  so  expe- 
rienced, sagacious,  and  patriotic  a  magazine 
as  Pearson's,  to  whose  editors,  as  well  as  to 
Mr.  Thomas,  I  am  indebted  for  the  welcome 
opportunity  to  let  the  winds  of  truth  blow  upon 
Mr.  Thomas's  seductive  house  of  cards. 


MR.  THOMAS  says,  "The  West  .  .  . 
has  no  voice  in  administration,  as 
the  forestry  bureau  at  Washington 
is  made  up  of  Eastern  theorists." 

The  office  of  the  Forest  Service  at 
Washington  is  managed  by  four  men.  The 
first  of  them  was  born  west  of  the  Alle- 
ghanies  in  a  public  land  State,  and  began 
his  practical  acquaintance  with  Western 
Forests  seventeen  years  ago,  when  he  be- 
came, as  I  can  testify  from  personal  ex- 
perience, a  first-class  mountain  man.  The 
second,  born  west  of  the  Rockies,  was  for 
ten  years  a  small  cattleman  in  Arizona,  then 
went  into  sheep  raising,  and  was  Secretary 
of  the  Arizona  Wool  Growers  Association 
when  he  entered  the  Government  Service. 
He  had  never  been  East  in  his  life  until  he 
was  thirty-four  years  old.  The  third  went 
to  California  when  he  was  ten  years  old, 
worked  his  way  through  the  University  of 
California,  and  had  been  for  seven  years  in 
charge  of  practical  forest  work  in  Califor- 
nia, Montana,  and  Idaho  before  he  was 
called  to  Washington.  The  fourth,  born 
east  of  the  Rockies  like  Mr.  Thomas  him- 
self, moved  West  in  1892,  and  went  into 
business  in  the  same  city,  Seattle,  where 
Mr.  Thomas  is  an  editor  of  one  of  the 
principal  Anti-Conservation  journals  of  the 
West.  He  enlisted  in  the  Spanish  War,  and 
afterward  entered  the  Forest  Service.  In 
all  he  has  been  in  constant  touch  with  the 
West  and  its  problems  for  about  twenty 
years. 

Furthermore,  of  the  147  men  in  actual 
charge  of  the  National  Forests,  all  had  had 
extensive  Western  experience  before  they 
were  given  their  present  responsible  work, 
and  about  80  per  cent,  were  Western  men 
before  they  entered  the  service  at  all.  Of 
the  1,393  Forest  Rangers  on  the  rolls  June 


30,  1912,  a  little  over  99  per  cent,  were 
actual  residents  of  the  West  when  they 
were  appointed.  The  practical  work  of 
forest  administration  in  the  West  is  now 
in  the  hands  of  Western  men. 

■\>1"R.  THOMAS  repeats  in  substance  the 
•*•  ^  statement  made  in  the  annual  report 
of  the  Forester  that  the  National  Forests 
do  not  yield  each  year  as  much  as  they  cost. 
He  mentions  an  excess  of  expenditures  over 
receipts  of  $3,582,615.19  for  the  year  191 1, 
and  adds,  "What  would  be  thought  of  a 
private  business  that  would  show  such  a 
balance  sheet?" 

The  sum  of  $3,582,615.19  includes,  al- 
though Mr.  Thomas  does  not  mention  it,  an 
extraordinary  expense  of  $1,086,590.89  for 
meeting  the  exceptional  outburst  of  forest 
fires  which  followed  the  driest  season  ever 
known  in  the  West.  That,  however,  is  by 
the  way.  The  real  answer  is  that  a  private 
business,  conducted  under  the  limitations 
imposed  by  law  upon  the  Forest  Service, 
and  with  the  same  conditions  to  meet, 
would  present  a  balance  sheet  of  precisely 
the  same  kind.  The  object  for  which  the 
Service  must  be  conducted  is  not  to  make 
money  for  the  Government,  but  to  make  the 
forests  useful  to  the  largest  possible  number 
of  people.  In  doing  that  work  the  business 
methods  of  the  Service  need  fear  nothing 
in  comparison  with  the  best  managed  of  the 
great  private  corporations,  as  was  deter- 
mined by  the  report  of  Gunn,  Richards  & 
Co.,  a  distinguished  firm  of  business  or- 
ganizers, made  June  30,  1908. 

The  money  spent  on  the  National  Forests 
is  an  insurance  against  the  damage  or  de- 
struction by  fire  of  some  two  billion  dol- 
lars' worth  of  public  property,  and  against 
monopoly  and  extortion  when  the  private 


'CONSERVATION   AS   PRACTISED" 


O 

CO 


CO 


C3 


lands  which  now  supply  the  bulk  of  our 
yearly  consumption  of  timber  are  nearly  ex- 
hausted. The  timber  of  the  National  For- 
ests is  increasing  in  value  at  the  rate  of  at 
least  fifty  million  dollars  a  year.  It  would 
be  poor  economy  not  to  be  willing  to  spend 
two  or  three  millions  annually  to  insure  that 
immense  return. 

Ultimately  the  National  Forests  will  be 
self-supporting.  But  in  the  meantime  there 
is  little  more  reason  in  complaining  that 
they  cost  more  than  they  bring  in  than 
there  would  be  in  complaining  that  the 
premiums  paid  for  fire  insurance,  or  the 
cost  of  a  city  fire  department,  failed  to 
bring  in  an  annual  cash  return. 

*\TR.  THOMAS  says  the  annual  cut  from 
•*•  •*•  the  National  Forests  is  "but  8^  per 
cent,  of  the  annual  crop." 

The  whole  annual  crop  or  growth  is  not, 
and  cannot  be,  harvested  at  present  on  the 
National  Forests,  and  the  reason  is  not  far 
to  seek.  When  the  National  Forests  were 
created  the  best  and  most  accessible  of  the 
timber  had  already  been  appropriated.  The 
Government  took  what  was  left.  Three- 
fourths  of  the  National  Forest  timber  is 
even  yet  inaccessible  by  reason  of  the  lack 
of  transportation.  Where  it  is  accessible 
and  salable,  the  annual  crop  is  being  har- 
vested. Much  of  the  more  remote  timber 
could  not  yet  be  cut  even  if  it  were  given 
away. 

The  suggestion  is  constantly  made  that 
the  National  Forest  timber  should  be  sold 
below  its  value,  to  which  suggestion  the 
conclusive  answer  is  contained  in  the  re- 
port of  a  legislative  investigation  filed  with 
the  Governor  of  the  State  of  Washington 
April  I,  1910,  which  report  contains  and 
comments  on  more  than  a  hundred  cases 
of  sales  of  State  timberland  for  less  than  it 
was  worth.  There  is  no  safe  and  prac- 
ticable way  to  dispose  of  Government  tim- 
ber except  for  what  it  will  bring  in  the 
open  market. 

O  PEAKING  of  the  Mount  Olympus  Na- 
^  tional  Monument  which  lies  within  the 
Olympic  National  Forest,  Mr.  Thomas  says, 
"On  this  reserve  no  one  can  cut  a  stick  of 
firewood,  prospect  a  ledge  of  mineral,  catch 
a  fish  or  shoot  a  bird.  Instead  of  restricting 
its  boundaries  to  the  base  of  Mount  Olym- 
pus, the  monument  covers  608,640  acres  of 
the  heart  of  a  known  mineral  region." 


Mr.  Thomas  has  evidently  been  misin- 
formed. If  he  will  go  and  camp  in  the 
Olympic  National  Monument  he  will  find 
by  practical  experience  that  he  can  cut  all 
the  sticks  of  firewood  he  needs,  that  the 
only  limit  on  the  fish  he  can  catch  will  be 
his  personal  skill  and  sense  of  sportsman- 
ship, and  that  he  can  hunt  buck  deer  from 
September  i  to  November  I,  and  shoot 
grouse  from  October  i  to  January  i,  and 
shore  birds  and  water  fowl  from  October  i 
to  February  i.  There  are  no  restrictions 
whatever  on  fishing  and  hunting  within 
this  Monument  except  those  imposed  by 
the  game  laws  of  the  State  of  Washing- 
ton. 

The  Olympic  National  Monument  was 
created  with  its  present  area  at  the  request 
of  a  congressman  from  the  State  of  Wash- 
ington, who  presumably  represented  the 
wishes  and  best  interests  of  his  State. 

If  there  is  mineral  within  this  National 
Monument  it  will,  of  course,  be  opened  to 
development.  At  the  time  the  monument 
was  created  it  was  not  known  to  include  a 
mineral  region,  and  there  are  said  to  be 
strong  doubts  whether  it  does  so  now,  al- 
though a  vigorous  attempt  is  being  made 
on  that  ground  to  have  the  land  restored 
to  the  pubHc  domain. 

Whether  there  is  mineral  or  not,  this 
area  does  contain  valuable  timber.  In  that 
connection  it  may  be  well  to  recall  what 
happened  when  over  700,000  acres  of  heav- 
ily timbered  land  in  the  Olympic  National 
Forest  were  restored  to  the  public  domain 
and  opened  to  entry  in  1891,  on  the  plea 
that  it  was  chiefly  valuable  for  agriculture. 
Within  ten  years  524,000  acres  of  it  had 
passed  into  the  hands  of  men  who  held  it 
exclusively  for  its  timber.  One  man  had 
acquired  81,530  acres,  and  five  had  178,000. 
And  of  this  whole  vast  timbered  area,  after 
ten  years  less  than  one  acre  in  a  thousand 
was  actually  under  cultivation. 

TUTR.  THOMAS  also  says,  "Waterpower 
•^  ■*•  sites  on  the  public  domain  were  with- 
drawn without  provision  for  their  future 
utilization.  The  city  of  Bellingham  in  the 
State  of  Washington  is  served  with  power 
right  now  generated  in  British  Columbia, 
because  progress  on  waterpower  develop- 
ment in  the  Mount  Baker  region  has  been 
halted  by  the  government. 

"The  pretext  for  these  withdrawals  is 
that  they  are  intended  to  prevent  monopoly. 


PEARSON'S   MAGAZINE 


and  this  in  a  region  where  monopoly  is  im- 
possible in  the  very  nature  of  things." 

The  waterpower  sites  were  withdrawn  to 
give  Congress  an  opportunity  to  regulate 
their  use.  They  are  still  withdrawn  solely 
because  of  the  persistent  refusal  of  the 
waterpower  interests  to  allow  the  passage 
of  a  law,  such  as  the  Lever  bill,  now  before 
Congress,  that  would  insure  the  use  of  the 
public  power  sites  without  monopoly. 
These  power  interests  often  work  anony- 
mously, but  the  list  of  their  spokesmen  in- 
cludes such  names  as  Frank  Short  of  Cali- 
fornia, Francis  Lynde  Stetson  of  New 
York,  Wm.  P.  Lay  of  Alabama,  and  T.  R. 
McKee  of  the  General  Electric  Company. 
If  there  has  been  failure  to  develop,  the  re- 
sponsibility lies  directly  upon  the  men  who 
have  blocked  the  unremitting  attempts  of 
the  Conservationists  to  get  a  reasonable 
law  that  would  open  these  sites  to  develop- 
ment, and  hardly  less  upon  newspapermen, 
like  Mr.  Thomas,  who  make  it  easy  for 
Congressmen  to  defeat  the  true  interests  of 
their  constituents  by  misrepresenting  the 
facts  and  throwing  the  blame  on  the  wrong 
people. 

In  this  they  are  not  always  successful. 
For  example.  Miles  Poindexter  of  Mr. 
Thomas's  own  State  of  Washington,  was 
elected  to  the  United  States  Senate  mainly 
on  the  Conservative  issue,  standing  against 
Mr.  Thomas  and  with  me,  and  on  that  is- 
sue carried  Mr.  Thomas's  own  city  of 
Seattle. 

To  return  to  our  argument,  in  the  Na- 
tional Forests  the  power  sites  are  now  and 
have  for  years  been  open  to  development 
under  the  act  of  February  15,  1901,  under 
which  274  permits  have  been  issued  by  the 
Forest  Service  and  139  water-power  plants 
built,  in  addition  to  28  which  are  now  in 
process  of  construction.  I  do  not  know 
why  Bellingham  gets  its  power  from  Brit- 
ish Columbia,  but  I  do  know  that  the 
Mount  Baker  region  is  in  a  National  For- 
est, and  that  it  is  open  to  power  develop- 
ment under  the  same  conditions  which  per- 
mitted the  construction  of  power  plants  in 
other  Forests. 

Is  waterpower  monopoly  in  the  State  of 
Washington  impossible,  as  Mr.  Thomas 
declares?  A  report  of  the  Commissioner 
of  Corporations  published  in  March,  1912, 
shows  that  the  General  Electric  group  of 
power  companies  controls  forty  per  cent, 
of   the   commercial   waterpower   developed 


and  under  construction  in  the  United 
States,  while  the  officers  and  directors  of 
the  General  Electric  Company  and  its  three 
subsidiaries  control  twenty-four  corpora- 
tions which  operate  hydro-electric  plants, 
over  fifty  public  service  corporations,  and  a 
number  of  railroads  and  factories,  and  over 
fifty  banks  and  financial  houses.  This  same 
powerful  group  controls  seventy-two  per 
cent,  of  the  waterpower  in  Colorado,  fifty- 
eight  per  cent,  in  Oregon,  and  fifty-five  p.er 
cent,  in  Mr.  Thomas's  State  of  Washing- 
ton, in  which  two  corporations  have  al- 
ready succeeded  in  securing  nearly  three- 
quarters  (seventy  per  cent.)  of  all  the 
waterpower  yet  developed.  Comment  is 
unnecessary. 

"VTR.  THOMAS:  "Several  years  ago  a 
■*•  ■*■  large  coal  land  withdrawal  was  made 
in  Whatcom  County,  Washington,  and, 
through  department  ignorance  of  geograph- 
ical conditions,  Bellingham,  a  city  of  30,000, 
was  included  in  the  withdrawal." 

This  withdrawal,  like  all  withdrawals 
for  similar  purposes,  affected  only  certain 
kinds  of  land.  It  had  no  more  effect  on 
land  within  the  city  limits  of  Bellingham 
than  it  had  on  land  within  the  city  limits 
of  New  York.  It  respected  all  existing 
claims  and  property  rights  of  every  kind, 
and  had  to  do  only  with  coal,  oil,  gas,  and 
phosphate  rock.  All  other  minerals  may  be 
freely  located  and  developed  within  the 
area  withdrawn,  and  land  may  be  taken  up 
under  the  Homestead  Laws,  with  a  reser- 
vation of  the  underlying  coal  to  the  United 
States.  So  little  does  the  withdrawal  re- 
strict the  development  of  the  region  that, 
although  Mr.  Thomas  evidently  does  not 
know  it,  it  is  still  (Feb.  25,  1913)  in  effect. 
Such  a  withdrawal  might  be  made  to  in- 
clude the  land  beneath  Mr.  Thomas's  office 
in  Seattle  without  in  the  least  interfering 
with  his  rights  or  his  business. 

T^  EFERRING  to  coal  claims  in  Mount 
■*-^  Baker,  Mr.  Thomas  complains  of  de- 
lay in  granting  patents  when  the  coal  is 
needed  (as  it  is)  and  adds,  "This  is  one 
case  of  department  stupidity  and  neglect, 
but  it  is  not  an  isolated  case.  It  is  typical 
of  the  manner  in  which  all  matters  pertain- 
ing to  the  public  domain  have  been 
handled." 

Sixteen  coal  entries  were  made  in  this 
field.    Half  have  already  been  patented,  five 


'CONSERVATION   AS    PRACTISED" 


of  them  within  six  months  after  entry. 
Several  of  the  claims  are  now  under  inves- 
tigation. This  seems  to  be  one  more  case 
of  holding  the  Government  responsible 
when  in  reality  there  is  no  valid  basis  for 
complaint  of  delay. 

"D  UREAU  ignorance  of  forest  conditions 
•■-'  in  the  far  West,"  says  Mr.  Thomas,  "is 
dense  beyond  belief,"  and  cites  in  support 
the  case  of  a  forest  ranger  who,  in  1899, 
was  instructed  to  blaze  out  the  lines  of  his 
reserves,  which  covered  an  area  about  half 
as  large  as  the  state  of  Connecticut,  and 
patrol  its  boundaries  every  day. 

This  anecdote  of  fourteen  years  ago 
dates  from  a  time  long  before  the  present 
National  Forest  policy  was  in  existence, 
and  six  years  before  the  care  of  the  Na- 
tional Forests  was  transferred  from  the 
General  Land  Office  to  the  Forest  Service, 
upon  whose  efficiency  it  can  therefore  have 
no  bearing.  This  was  the  period,  unless  I 
am  mistaken,  when  not  a  single  man  in  the 
Division  which  had  charge  of  the  National 
Forests  at  Washington,  had  ever  seen  or 
set  foot  in  one  of  them.  I  could  myself 
give  Mr.  Thomas  other  cases  from  that  al- 
most forgotten  time  which  are  even  more 
striking.  Take,  for  example,  that  of  two 
men,  also  in  the  State  of  Washington,  who 
were  instructed  to  buy  rakes  and  rake  up 
and  burn  the  down  timber  on  more  than 
a  thousand  square  miles  of  heavy  forest. 
Neither  of  these  stories,  however,  has  any- 
thing to  do  with  the  present  subject  of  dis- 
cussion. 

-V/fR.  THOMAS:  "Sales  on  the  11,- 
''■  ■*■  684,360  acres  of  forest  reserve  in  the 
state  of  Washington  have  aggregated  95,- 
204,000  board  feet  in  14  years,  or  less  than 
7,000,000  annually.  Decay  is  destroying 
nearly  a  billion  feet  of  timber  annually,  so 
that  cutting  has  not  reached  7  per  cent,  of 
the  decay  loss." 

The  facts  are  that  in  the  eight  years, 
1905  to  1912  inclusive,  during  which  the 
Forest  Service  has  had  charge  of  the  Na- 
tional Forests,  415,512,900  feet  of  timber 
has  been  sold  from  the  National  Forests  of 
the  State  of  Washington.  The  average  cut 
during  that  period  was  not  seven,  but  171^^ 
million  feet  annually.  For  the  last  three 
years  the  cut  has  averaged  a  little  over 
thirty  million  feet,  and  during  the  last  year 
it  reached  37,000,000  feet. 


The  total  stand  of  merchantable  timber 
in  the  National  Forests  of  Washington  is 
estimated  at  about  ninety  billion  feet.  This 
includes  all  classes  of  timber,  the  thrifty 
and  growing,  as  well  as  the  over-mature. 
There  is  undoubtedly  some  loss  from  decay. 
It  is,  however,  but  gradual ;  and  Mr. 
Thomas's  figure  of  one  billion  feet  a  year 
is  preposterous.  While  it  seems  to  be  well 
within  Mr.  Thomas's  average  limit  of  error, 
it  is  an  overstatement  by  more  than  four  to 
one. 

A  GAIN  Mr.  Thomas  refers  to  an  al- 
"^^  leged  loss  to  the  States,  "which  have 
had  taken  from  them  areas  to  be  held  in 
perpetuity  as  undeveloped  wilderness  on 
which  there  is  no  taxable  or  revenue-pro- 
ducing property." 

Let  us  see.  Apart  from  the  fact  that 
more  than  6oo,oeo  persons  every  year  en- 
gage in  the  use  or  development  of  National 
Forests,  the  Western  States  now  receive 
for  their  schools  and  roads,  in  lieu  of  taxes, 
twenty-five  per  cent,  of  the  gross  revenue 
from  the  National  Forests.  Up  to  January 
30,  1912,  they  have  thus  received  $2,- 
606,400,  of  which  $115,205  went  to  the 
State  of  Washington.  The  present  Con- 
gress has  set  aside  an  additional  ten  per 
cent,  for  building  roads,  and  over  $200,000 
has  already  been  made  available.  In  some 
places  the  proceeds  from  this  thirty-five 
per  cent,  of  the  gross  revenue  already  ex- 
ceeds what  would  be  produced  by  taxation 
under  private  ownership.  In  others  it  still 
falls  short.  In  the  end  it  will  surely  ex- 
ceed it  everywhere. 

TN  most  of  the  Western  States,  in  the 
-■■  areas  locked  up,  are  lands  belonging  to 
the  commonwealth.  Washington,  for  in- 
stance, has  nearly  600,000  acres  of  school 
lands  worth  from  $12,000,000  to  $15,090,000 
within  the  eleven  reserves  plastered  over 
its  area.  Idaho  and  Montana  fare  simi- 
larly."   Thus  Mr.  Thomas. 

This  statement  probably  refers  to  a  de- 
cision of  the  Secretary  of  the  Interior  that 
the  creation  of  a  National  Forest  before 
public  surveys  have  been  made  defeats  the 
claims  of  certain  States  to  school  lands  in 
the  National  Forests,  while  giving  them  the 
right  to  make  indemnity  selections  else- 
where. This  decision  of  another  depart- 
ment is  controlling  on  the  Forest  Service, 
which  nevertheless  has  steadily  recognized 


PEARSON'S   MAGAZINE 


the  moral  right  of  the  States  to  these  lands, 
has  refrained  from  cutting  timber  on  them 
except  in  agreement  with  the  States,  and 
has  vigorously  insisted  that  the  equities  of 
the  States  must  be  allowed  and  satisfied  by 
exchange.  On  February  15,  1912,  a  final 
exchange  of  this  kind  was  made  with  South 
Dakota.  On  June  4  last,  a  similar  ex- 
change of  certain  lands  was  made  with 
Idaho,  and  an  exchange  that  will  satisfy  all 
of  Idaho's  claims  is  now  nearly  complete. 
As  soon  as  legislative  authority  can  be  se- 
cured the  same  arrangement  will  be  made 
.with  Montana  and  other  States. 

While  I  was  Forester,  I  made  a  similar 
proposition  personally  and  repeatedly  to 
the  Land  Commissioner  of  the  State  of 
Washington,  but  Mr.  Ross  evidently  pre- 
ferred a  cause  of  quarrel  to  the  satisfac- 
tion of  the  State's  claims,  and  my  sugges- 
tion was  always  rejected. 

•K/TR.  THOMAS:  "One  third  of  Wash- 
^  •*•  ington's  total  area  is  reserved.  On 
these  reservations  there  is  no  industry,  no 
settlement,  no  development,  though  twenty 
per  cent,  of  the  lands  within  them  are 
arable  and  capable  of  settlement,  and  an- 
other twenty  per  cent,  mineral  on  which 
the  forest  growth  is  inferior  and  practically 
valueless." 

If  it  were  true,  this  would  be  by  far  the 
most  important  paragraph  in  the  whole 
article.  There  are  agricultural  and  mineral 
lands  within  the  National  Forests,  about 
two  (not  twenty)  per  cent,  of  the  former, 
and  an  unknown  and  for  the  present  un- 
knowable amount  of  the  latter.  Are  they 
tied  up? 

Within  a  year  after  it  took  charge,  the 
Forest  Service  itself  proposed  and  on  June 
II,  1906,  secured  the  passage  of  an  act  to 
open  to  settlement  any  lands  in  National 
Forests  which  were  more  valuable  for  agri- 
culture than  for  forest  purposes.  Under 
this  law,  1,213,000  acres  have  already  been 
opened  to  settlement  for  the  benefit  of  over 
12,000  settlers.  The  work  is  proceeding  so 
rapidly  that  within  three  years,  in  spite  of 
the  huge  area  of  the  National  Forests,  it 
will  have  been  completed. 

Most  of  the  agricultural  land  still  owned 
by  the  Government  in  the  National  Forests 
is  heavily  timbered,  and  worth  from  two  to 
twenty  times  as  much  for  the  timber  as  for 
the  land.  To  give  the  timber  with  the 
land  would   merely  invite   speculation   in- 


stead of  promoting  settlement.  So  the 
Forest  Service  first  sells  the  timber,  and 
then  the  land  is  opened  to  settlement,  by 
which  arrangement  the  imitation  home- 
steader is  eliminated.  The  effect  of  giving 
the  timber  with  the  land  is  well  illustrated 
by  the  Olympic  Forest  elimination  cited 
above. 

How  then  as  to  the  mineral  lands?  Are 
they  open  to  development? 

Every  season  there  are  45,000  miners  and 
prospectors  in  the  National  Forests.  The 
prospector  is  welcome.  He  may  and  does 
search  the  Forests  at  will.  He  cuts  with- 
out charge  the  timber  he  needs  for  his 
claim.  He  is  often  aided  by  the  roads, 
bridges,  trails,  and  telephone  lines  built  by 
the  Forest  Service.  Of  all  the  false 
charges  made  against  the  Forest  Service, 
there  is  none  more  perfectly  false  than  the 
charge  that  the  National  Forests  are  closed 
against  mineral  development.  If  the  well- 
established  policy  of  the  Forest  Service 
were  not  proof  enough,  there  is  the  law  of 
June  4,  1897,  which  specifically  provides 
that  the  National  Forests  shall  be  open  to 
prospecting  and  mining. 

TUTR.  THOMAS:  "Mr.  Graves  maintains 
■••  "*•  that  it  is  profitable  to  continue  for- 
estry on  lands  adaptable  to  agriculture. 
But  is  it  a  wise  national  policy  which  seeks 
to  perpetuate  forest  growth  at  33-^  cents 
per  acre  per  year  on  land  which  properly 
cultivated  will  produce  from  $50  to  $500 
per  acre  per  annum?  If  it  is,  then  produc- 
tion has  ceased  to  be  a  fundamental  ele- 
ment of  economics." 

This  statement  would  be  important  if  it 
were  true.  The  simple  but  conclusive  an- 
swer is  that  Mr.  Graves  holds  no  such 
opinion,  and  that  already  a  million  and  a 
quarter  acres  of  agricultural  land  in  the 
National  Forests  have  been  opened  to  en- 
try by  twelve  thousand  settlers  under  a 
policy  initiated  by  the  Forest  Service  in 
1906  and  in  vigorous  effect  to  this  day. 

•V4'R.  THOMAS  says:  "The  entire  ii,- 
•*■  ^  684,000  acres  of  National  Forests  of 
the  State  of  Washington,  more  than  a 
fourth  of  the  State's  total  area,  contains 
exactly  34  miles  of  wagon  road." 

This  statement  is  but  twenty-six  hundred 
and  sixty  per  cent,  out  of  the  way.  The 
fact  is  that  the  National  Forests  of  the 
State  of  Washington  contain  938  miles  of 


"CONSERVATION   AS   PRACTISED" 


road  and  1,491  miles  of  trails,  of  which  the 
Forest  Service  itself  has  actually  built 
more  miles  of  road  than  Mr.  Thomas  al- 
lows altogether,  and  in  addition  more  than 
a  thousand  miles  of  trails. 

AS  matters  stand,"  says  Mr.  Thomas, 
"only  the  very  wealthy  can  bid  at  such 
sales" — the  sales  of  timber  by  the  Forest 
Service. 

Again  important  if  it  were  true.  The 
fact  is  that  ninety-nine  per  cent,  of  all  the 
timber  sales  made  during  the  last  fiscal  year 
were  for  amounts  under  $5,000  and  97  per 
cent,  for  amounts  under  $1,000.  Not  only 
so,  but  over  3,000  small  operators  cut  63 
per  cent,  of  the  timber  cut  during  the  year, 
while  more  than  38,000  permits  for  free 
timber  were  issued  to  settlers  and  pros- 
pectors. With  the  growing  monopoly  of 
Western  timber,  it  will  soon  be  the  Na- 
tional Forests  alone  that  give  the  small 
lumberman  a  chance. 

■KTR.  THOMAS:  "In  the  Philippine  Isl- 
^  *•  ands  with  116,000  square  miles,  there 
are  many  fine  forests,  but  up  to  last  Octo- 
ber no  National  Forests  had  been  created 
there." 

This  statement  of  Mr.  Thomas's  is  with- 
in about  forty  million  acres  of  being  cor- 
rect. Over  ninety-nine  per  cent,  of  the 
forests  of  the  Philippine  Islands,  or  59,500 
square  miles,  are  forest  reserves  controlled 
and  managed  by  the  United  States  Govern- 
ment through  the  Bureau  of  Forestry  of 
the  Philippines,  precisely  as  the  National 
Forests  in  the  United  States  (likewise 
called  forest  reserves  until  1905)  are  con- 
trolled and  managed  by  the  United  States 
Government  through  the  Forest  Service. 
The  names  used  to  be  the  same,  the  pur- 
poses are  the  same,  the  general  lines  of 
policy  are  the  same;  and  of  this  I  speak 
with  some  confidence  because  policy  and 
purposes  were  embodied  in  a  report  made 
by  me  to  Mr.  Taft  while  he  was  Governor 
of  the  Philippine  Islands. 

"V/TR.  THOMAS:  "Alaska  to-day  consists 
'*•'*•  of  a  few  towns  and  mining  camps 
governed  by  United  States  marshals  and 
surrounded  by  alien  territory  on  which 
Alaskans  can  venture  as  trespassers  only. 
It  is  rich  in  every  natural  resource,  but 
these  resources  are  as  worthless  as  the 
minerals    in    the    moon.      They    can't    be 


touched  by  {be  people  who  require  them." 

This  statement  is  fully  as  accurate  as  that 
just  quoted  about  the  Philippine  Islands. 
First,  any  Alaskan  can  go  freely  upon  any 
public  land  or  National  Forest  in  Alaska 
without  committing  trespass  of  any  sort. 
Every  foot  of  it  is  open  to  the  freest  access. 
Second,  the  resources  of  Alaska  "can't  be 
touched  by  the  people  who  require  them" 
to  the  following  extent: 

In  19 12,  there  were  sold  from  the  Na- 
tional Forests  of  Alaska,  45,000,000  feet  of 
timber  in  355  sales. 

Every  kind  of  mineral  except  coal  is 
freely  open  to  development.  During  the 
past  year,  the  mineral  resources  of  Alaska 
which  "can't  be  touched  by  the  people  who 
require  them"  produced  copper  to  the  value 
of  $4,904,715  and  gold  and  silver  to  the 
value  of  $16,031,705,  while  the  furs  which 
"can't  be  touched"  yet  were  touched  to  the 
value  of  $728,554. 

Although  it  is  doubtful  whether  Mr. 
Thomas  had  fish  in  mind  as  one  of  the 
natural  resources  he  was  describing,  it  is 
worth  while  noting  that  the  untouchable 
salmon  resources  of  Alaska  yielded  during 
the  past  year  $16,459,036. 

'TTHE  law,"  says  Mr.  Thomas,  "as  the  De- 
"••  partment  interprets  it,  is  that  no  man 
can  acquire  a  coal  claim  unless  he  acquires 
it  'for  his  own  individual  use  and  benefit.' 
And  'own  individual  use  and  benefit'  is 
capable  of  no  elasticity.  Nowhere  in 
our  statutes  is  there  another  phrase  so 
rigid." 

There  is  little  fault  to  be  found  with  this 
statement  except  that  it  is  not  so.  Such 
provisions  are  common  in  our  public  land 
laws.    For  example : 

The  Homestead  Act  (R.  S.  2290)  says: 
"The  entry  shall  be  made  in  good  faith  for 
the  purpose  of  actual  settlement  and  cul- 
tivation and  not  for  the  benefit  of  any  other 
person,  persons,  or  corporation." 

The  Timber  and  Stone  Act  (Act  of 
June  3,  1878,  Sec.  2)  says:  "The  applicant 
to  purchase  must  state  under  oath  that  he 
does  not  apply  to  purchase  land  for  specu- 
lation but  in  good  faith  to  appropriate  it  to 
his  own  exclusive  use  and  benefit,  and  that 
he  has  not  directly  or  indirectly  made  any 
agreement  or  contract  in  any  way  or  man- 
ner with  any  person  or  persons  whatsoever, 
by  which  the  title  which  he  may  acquire 
from  the  Government  may  inure,  in  whole 


PEARSON'S   MAGAZINE 


or  in  part,  to  the  benefit  of  any  person  ex- 
cept himself." 

MR.  THOMAS  assumes  to  take  issue 
with  the  conservation  policy,  yet 
says:  "A  coal  land  leasing  law  in  1907 
would  have  accomplished  all  that  could 
have  been  done  under  private  ownership." 

Mr.  Thomas  is  evidently  not  aware  that 
immediately  upon  the  withdrawal  of  the 
coal  lands  in  1906  the  Roosevelt  adminis- 
tration made  every  effort  to  secure  the  pas- 
sage of  a  coal  land  leasing  bill  for  open- 
ing them  to  development  without  waste  and 
without  monopoly.  Every  year  since  an  ef- 
fort has  been  made  by  the  friends  of  Con- 
servation to  pass  similar  legislation.  That 
we  have  not  succeeded  was  directly  and 
solely  due  to  the  attitude  of  the  men  (Gug- 
genheim and  others)  who  preferred  to  see 
no  legislation  enacted  rather  than  legisla- 
tion which  would  prevent  speculation  and 
monopoly  in  coal,  and  who  were  supported 
by  Mr.  Thomas's  paper,  the  Seattle  Post 
Intelligencer,  in  their  successful  effort  to 
prevent  the  passage  of  a  coal  land  leasing 
law. 

It  does  not  become  the  men  who  opposed 
this  legislation  at  the  time  to  express  re- 
gret now  that  it  did  not  pass,  without  at 
least  acknowledging  their  share  in  defeat- 
ing it.  If  they  had  allowed  it  to  pass,  the 
just  complaint  that  Alaska  is  not  allowed 
to  use  her  own  fuel  could  not  now  be 
made.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  men 
who  were  directly  responsible  for  locking 
up  the  coal  of  Alaska,  first  by  their  un- 
successful attempt  to  have  it  monopolized, 
and  second  by  their  successful  effort  to 
prevent  its  development  under  conditions 
that  would  effectually  prevent  monopoly, 
are  now  the  loudest  in  lamenting  a  condi- 
tion which  but  for  them  would  never  have 
taken  place. 

-V/JR.  THOMAS:  "The  remedy  for  our 
*•  ■*•  Conservation  bungle  is  simple  .  .  . 
Classify  the  public  lands.  These  four 
words  contain  the  cure." 

For  once  Mr.  Thomas  is  almost  right. 
The  classification  of  the  public  lands  is  not 
the  whole  cure,  but  it  is  a  part  of  it,  and 
the  United  States  Forest  Service  has  done 
its  full  share  toward  that  end.  Both  before 
and  since  I  left  it,  it  has  given  its  best  at- 
tention to  segregating  agricultural  lands 
from  lands  more  valuable  for  forestry.     It 


has  opened  a  million  and  a  quarter  acres  of 
the  true  agricultural  lands  to  entry,  and  is 
protecting  the  lands  more  valuable  for  tim- 
ber against  the  land  grabbers.  It  has 
eliminated  from  the  forest  boundaries  more 
than  ten  million  acres  of  lands  more  suit- 
able for  other  uses.  It  ascertains  the  min- 
eral character  of  lands  claimed  under  the 
mineral  land  laws,  and  in  many  ways  gives 
practical  effect  to  the  fundamental  principle 
of  any  wise  public  land  classification  policy, 
the  principle  that  each  parcel  of  land  must 
be  put  to  that  use  in  which  it  will  con- 
tribute most  to  the  commonwealth. 

TT  is  one  of  the  commonest  charges 
•*•  against  the  Forest  Service,  because  it  is 
so  easy  to  make,  that  it  "Nullifies  the  acts 
of  Congress,"  indulges  in  "Bureaucratic 
government,"  to  quote  again  Mr.  Thomas's 
language,  and  generally  does  as  it  pleases 
without  regard  to  the  law  or  to  certain 
kinds  of  prophets. 

The  Forest  Service  does  disregard  proph- 
ets of  Mr.  Thomas's  kind  for  reasons  which 
I  hope  have  already  appeared  to  the  reader; 
but  if  it  had  disregarded  the  law  that  fact 
would  long  ago  have  been  judicially  estab- 
lished. The  truth  is  that  the  Forest  Serv- 
ice is  law  abiding  with  such  completeness 
that  in  no  single  case  has  any  court  of  last 
resort  declared  any  action  by  the  Forest 
Service  to  have  exceeded  its  legal  powers, 
and  this  includes  two  decisions  by  the  Su- 
preme Court  of  the  United  States.  The 
Forest  Service  has  frequently  applied  the 
law  in  ways  that  were  distasteful  to  certain 
special  interests,  but  when  the  final  test  of 
judicial  decision  has  been  made,  it  has  been 
proved  without  exception  that  the  Service 
had  respected  the  law  and  acted  within  its 
legal  powers. 

T  IKE  so  many  others  who  attack  it,  Mr. 
•*-'  Thomas  does  not  understand  what 
Conservation  means.  "Conservation,"  he 
says,  "has  been  intrusted  to  a  bureau  of  the 
Agricultural  Department."  It  is  doubtless 
the  Forest  Service  which  Mr.  Thomas  had 
in  mind. 

A  portion  of  the  work  in  Conservation 
is  indeed  intrusted  to  the  Forest  Service, 
but  the  statement  might  be  accepted  as 
more  accurate  if  Mr.  Thomas  had  not 
omitted  to  mention  that  other  portions  are 
intrusted  to  five  other  Bureaus  in  the  De- 
partment   of    Agriculture,    such     as    the 


"CONSERVATION   AS   PRACTISED" 


Bureau  of  Soils  and  the  Bureau  of  Plant 
Industry;  to  five  Bureaus  in  the  Depart- 
ment of  the  Interior,  such  as  the  General 
Land  Office  and  the  Bureau  of  Mines;  one 
in  the  Department  of  Justice,  charged  with 
the  enforcement  of  the  public  land  laws; 
and  three  in  the  War  Department,  which 
deal  with  the  control  and  development  of 
navigable  streams  (including  waterpower) 
and  with  the  conservation  of  the  natural 
resources  of  military  reservations  and  the 
Philippine  Islands.  In  other  respects  the 
statement  that  conservation  is  intrusted  to 
a  single  bureau  appears  to  be  beyond  criti- 
cism. 

Mr.  Thomas's  article  presents  an  em- 
barrassment of  riches  to  the  man  who  will 
look  up  the  facts.  Richer  digging  is  sel- 
dom found,  but  the  foregoing  samples  will 
suffice.  I  should  have  been  glad  to  touch, 
among  other  things,  on  the  question  of  the 
Chugach  National  Forest,  which  was  not 
"created  under  a  false  pretence"  and  which 
does  not  "exclude  the  only  timber  worth 
while  in  Southern  and  Southeastern 
Alaska,"  and  upon  the  whole  question  of 
coal  and  other  monopolies  attempted  or 
achieved  by  the  Guggenheim  Syndicate. 
But  perhaps  enough  has  been  said  to  raise 
a  reasonable  doubt  whether  after  all  the 
grabbers  have  had  all  the  right  on  their 
side. 

There  are  three  principal  sources  of  op- 
position to  Conservation  in  the  West. 
First,  the  men  who  came  out  as  pioneers, 


and  who  can  not  realize  that  the  time  when 
everything  was  free  could  not  last  and  has 
gone  by.  Second,  the  men  who  have  been 
checked  by  Conservation  in  their  efforts  to 
grab  more  than  their  share  of  the  public 
wealth.  Third,  men  interested  in  develop- 
ment, and  rightly  so,  who  have  been  de- 
ceived by  the  stream  of  lies  on  the  subject 
of  Conservation  put  in  circulation  by  its 
enemies. 

These  men  are  opponents  only  until  they 
learn  the  facts,  but  until  they  do  their  dis- 
content with  Conservation  is  no  better 
based  than  the  hostility  of  the  Romans  of 
Nero's  time  to  the  Christians,  which  rested 
on  the  current  fable  that  the  Christians 
were  enemies  of  humanity,  habitually  mur- 
dered little  children,  and  worshiped  an 
ass's  head. 

I  do  not  say  that  the  Forest  Service  is 
free  from  the  common  human  faults,  but  I 
do  assert  that  its  work  is  peculiarly  neces- 
sary, unusually  hard  to  do  and  remarkably 
well  done. 

The  pity  of  it  is  that  reckless  perversion 
should  turn  against  it  some  men  who  are 
naturally  its  friends,  and  so  should  make 
still  more  difficult  the  enormous  task  of 
wisely  opening  to  public  use  the  natural 
resources  on  an  area  as  large  as  all  the 
States  from  Maine  to  Virginia,  and  doing 
it  with  the  least  practicable  restraint  to 
the  individual,  with  the  largest  benefits  to 
the  people  generally,  and  without  monopoly 
or  unnecessary  waste. 


CONSERVATION  AS 
PaACTISED 

f>9^jy  H«  THOMAS 


HOW  CONSERVATION  AS  PRACTISED  THREATENS  TO  DESTROY  THE  RESOURCES  WE 
ARE  TRYING  TO  CONSERVE  AND  BESIDES  AIDS  PRIVATE  MONOPOLY  IN  THREE  WAYS 

Here  is  a  first-hand  look  ckt  the  conservation  of  our  natural  resources  as 
practised.  See  how  you  like  it.  You  may  think  it  strange  that  the  article  be- 
ginning on  page  $1  should  advocate  government  ownership  of  the  coal  mines  as 
a  means  of  serving  the  people  when  the  government  has  failed  so  signally  in  its 
conservation  policy  which  is  meant  to  serve  the  people.  The  conservation  policy 
is  all  right.  The  conservation  practice  seems  to  be  all  wrong.  That's  all  there 
is  to  it.  Certainly  there  would  be  no  benefit  to  the  people  if  the  government 
handled  the  coal  mines  as  it  is  handling  the  conservation  matter.  Conservation 
as  practised  serves  private  monopoly.  It  is  the  people's  own  fault.  They — you 
— are  the  government.  Wake  up  and  show  some  interest  in  things.  You'll  get 
just  as  good,  just  as  an  efficient  government  as  you  demand.  You  are  the  gov- 
ernment. If  conservation  is  a  rank  failure  as  a  benefit  to  you,  it's  your  fault. 
Find  out  what  is  the  matter  first;  then  see  what  you  want  to  do  about  it.  You 
can  find  out  what  is  the  matter  with  our  pet  "  use  of  our  natural  resources  with- 
out waste  "  in  this  article  and  there's  a  whole  lot  the  matter  with  it.  The  Dem- 
ocratic Platform  promised  some  conservation  practice.    Let's  have  it. — Editors. 


CONSERVATION  has  been  defined  by 
its  chief  exponent  as  the  "use  with- 
out waste  of  our  natural    resources 
for  the  benefit  of  all  the  people." 
When  the  conservation  movement  started 


seriously,  little  more  than  a  decade  ago,  it 
was  welcomed  by  all  classes  except  the 
professional  land,  timber  and  coal  grabbers, 
and  by  all  sections  of  the  country.  The 
West  had  learned  the  lesson  of  the  East 


CONSERVATION   AS   PRACTISED 


resources    have    been    locked    up    by 

is;  coal 
lands,  oil  lands,  etc.,  have  been  reserved  as  national  forests. 


TT7ESTERN 
'  ^     blanketing  the  public  domain  with  reserves;  coal 


by  observation  and  example,  and  did  not 
want  to  see  its  great  forests  destroyed  as 
the  walnut  and  oak  groves  of  Ohio  and 
Indiana  and  the  maple  orchards  of  New 
England  were  annihilated. 

The  national  parks  have  met  popular  ap- 
proval. They  have  been  perpetuated  for  a 
worthy  purpose,  and  actually  serve  that 
purpose,  which  is  to  save  and  hold  for  all 
alike  for  all  time  wonderful  and  inspiring 
objects  of  nature. 

Our  national  forests  would  meet  with  the 
same  approval  if  they  served  the  purposes 
which  they  purport  to  serve. 

The  popular  conception  of  conservation 
is  that  it  permits  the  wise  use,  and  pre- 
vents the  wilful  waste,  of  the  natural  re- 
sources still  to  be  found  within  and  upon 
the  public  domain. 

Conservation  has  been  intrusted  to  a 
bureau  of  the  Agricultural  Department, 
which  has  been  permitted  to  grow  arrogant 
and  wasteful  without  reproof.  This  has 
gone  on  until  conservation  now  actually 
threatens  with  destruction  the  very  re- 
sources we  are  trying  to  hold  for  wise  use 
and  against  profligacy. 

The  West  sees  this.  The  East  does  not. 
The  East,  however,  is  acquainted  with  the- 
oretical conservation  only.  The  West  is  ac- 
quainted with  conservation  as  it  is  prac- 
tised. The  radical  conservationist  affects 
to  believe  that  Western  opposition  is  due  to 
the  alleged  fact  that  every  Westerner  is 
either  an  active  or  a  passive  land  thief. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  average  Western 
man  is  as  honest  as  the  average  Eastern 
man,  and  the  public  conscience  is  as  active 
an  entity  West  as  East,  therefore  there 
must  be  another  reason. 

In  the  first  place  it  is  the  West  and  not 
the  East,  North  or  South  which  has  been 
conserved.  The  West  is  carrying  the  bur- 
den for  the  whole  nation  for,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  163,171  acres  in  Michigan,  674,- 
970  acres  in  Florida  and  65,950  acres  in 
Porto  Rico,  our  national  forest  reserves, 
190,328,733  acres  in  all,  lie  in  tht  states 
west  of  the  Mississippi  and  within  the  ter- 
ritory of  Alaska. 


The  man  who  has  read  only  the  Forestry 
Bureau's  circulars  and  press  matter  knows 
only  one  side,  the  side  of  the  theorist  and 
the  radical;  what  the  publicist  with  a  col- 
lege course  knowledge  of  forestry  has  to 
say  of  the  purpose  and  work  of  the  forest 
service.  Out  in  the  states  where  conserva- 
tion is  going  on,  and  where  men  can  see  for 
themselves,  results  are  apparent. 

Conservation  has  piled  up  a  continuous 
deficit,  and  at  the  same  time  has  permitted 
an  appalling  waste  of  the  very  resources  it 
purports  to  save. 

A  bulletin  issued  by  the  Forest  Service 
under  date  of  October  30,  191 1,  gives  the 
total  area  of  all  the  national  forests  as  190,- 
328,733  acres.  Only  two  states  of  the  East- 
ern half  of  the  country,  Michigan  and 
Florida,  have  national  forests  within  their 
borders.  With  Porto  Rico  the  total  area  of 
forest  reserves  east  of  the  Mississippi  is 
904,690  acres.  Alaska  and  the  West  con- 
tain all  the  balance. 

Right  here  is  found  an  unequal  distribu- 
tion of  a  great  national  burden.  The  West 
carries  practically  all  of  it,  but  has  no  voice 
in  administration,  as  the  forestry  bureau  at 
Washington  is  made  up  of  Eastern  the- 
orists. 

A  statement  issued  by  Forester  Graves 
under  date  of  September  12,  1912,  gives  an 
estimated  stumpage  for  all  the  forests  under 
the  service  of  600,000,000,000  feet  board 
measure.  In  his  191 1  report  Mr.  Graves 
estimates  annual  new  growth  on  the  re- 
serves at  3,273,690  feet.  In  other  words 
that  is  the  crop. 

Total  timber  sales  on  the  reserves  for  the 
7  years,  1905  to  191 1  inclusive,  was  1,901,- 
532,000  feet,  or  less  than  60  per  cent,  of  any 
single  season's  growth.  The  average  an- 
nual cut  for  this  7-year  period  was  only 
271,647,000  board  feet,  or  about  eight  and 
one-half  per  cent,  of  the  annual  crop. 

Total  cost  of  administration  for  the  past 
five  years  is  shown  on  pages  12  and  13  of 
the  chief  forester's  report  for  191 1.  It  ag- 
gregates $18,164,984.56. 

The  total  revenues  for  the  same  period, 
as  shown  in  the  same  place  in  this  report, 


Bu^roft  LibruT 


PEARSON'S   MAGAZINE 


XT  ORTH  WESTERN  cities  have  to  get  their  power  from 


i^ 


British  Columbia  because  water  power  sites  have 


been  withdrawn  without  provision  for  their  future  use. 


400  years.  This  is  a  production  of  33^ 
cents  a  year  per  acre.  Mr.  Graves  main- 
tains that  it  is  profitable  to  continue  for- 
estry on  lands  adaptable  to  agriculture.  But 
is  it  a  wise  national  policy  which  seeks  to 
perpetuate  forest  growth  at  33^^  cents  per 
acre  per  year  on  land  which  properly  cul- 
tivated will  produce  from  $50  to  $500  per 
acre  per  annum?  If  it  is  then  production 
has  ceased  to  be  a  fundamental  element  of 
economics. 

Forest  preservation  as  practised  has  re- 
tarded mineral  as  well  as  agricultural  de- 
velopment in  every  state  where  there  are 
any  considerable  areas  within  the  reserves. 

An  opportunity  for  comparison  is  afforded 
by  those  national  forests  in  the  state  of 
Washington  which  lie  along  the  Canadian- 
American  boundary.  Locked  up  in  these 
areas  are  long  and  fertile  valleys  forested  at 
present,  and  in  the  extreme  mountainous 
parts  are  treeless  areas  highly  mineralized. 

South  of  the  International  line  in  the 
state  of  Washington  is  one  of  these  min- 
eral areas.  More  than  three-fourths  of  the 
northern  tier  of  counties,  however,  are 
swallowed  up  in  national  forests.  Mineral 
and  physical  characteristics  in  both  British 
Columbia  and  Washington  are  identical. 
The  line,  geographically,  is  imaginary.  To- 
pographically and  quantitatively  it  does  not 
exist.  As  between  development,  however, 
and  lack  of  development,  that  line  exactly 
traverses  the  49th  parallel  of  latitude,  for 
the  mines  of  the  region  just  north  of  the 
International  line,  the  Boundary  and  the 
East  and  West  Kootenay  districts,  produced 
some  $11,000,000  last  year,  while  those  to 
the  south  yielded  only  about  $800,000,  and 
all  but  an  insignificant  fraction  of  this  came 
from  the  mines  of  Republic,  located  in  a 
part  of  Ferry  County  happily  not  included 
in  any  national  forest. 

In  creating  the  forestry  service  it  was 
not  intended  that  mining  and  prospecting 
should  be  discouraged,  as  Congress  pro- 
vided legal  means  to  carry  on  both  occupa- 
tions within  the  reserves  themselves,  but 
here,  again,  the  forestry  bureau  has  trans- 
cended its  creator. 


It  has  abrogated  the  laws  of  Congress, 
not  by  direction,  not  by  any  positive  act,  but 
by  indirection  and  negation. 

If  the  forestry  service  were  to  sell  and 
cut  a  billion  feet  of  timber  annually  on  the 
reserves  in  Washington  State  alone  it  would 
have  from  $2,500,000  to  $3,000,000  annual 
revenues,  whereas  the  revenues  from  that 
source  have  not  yet  exceeded  an  average  of 
$10,000  per  year,  and  the  price  of  lumber 
would  go  down,  as  I  will  show  later. 

With  such  revenues,  roads  could  be  built 
and  mining  encouraged  on  the  reserves  un- 
der the  plain  provisions  of  the  laws  of  Con- 
gress, and  that  without  waste  of  timber  re- 
sources, for  a  billion  feet  of  lumber  sold  and 
cut  annually  would  not  exceed  either  natu- 
ral decay  or  new  growth. 

South  of  the  boundary  mining  and  pros- 
pecting are  permitted  to  languish  because  of 
lack  of  roads.  The  land  is  held  in  reserves 
by  the  federal  government.  Neither  state 
nor  county  has  any  taxable  property  within 
those  reserves.  Prospectors  are  not  men 
of  means  or  they  would  not  be  prospectors. 
To  discover  mineral  which  could  not  be  de- 
veloped because  of  the  lack  of  the  most 
primitive  means  of  transportation  would  be 
of  no  benefit,  so  prospectors  have  learned 
that  there  is  little  or  nothing  to  be  gained 
working  over  government  reserves. 

In  the  mining  regions  of  British  Columbia 
are  many  hundreds  of  miles  of  road  of  the 
very  best  character,  all  built  by  the  province. 
It  is  possible  to  secure  immediate  govern- 
ment aid  for  roads  into  any  new  region 
north  of  the  boundary  where  mineral  has 
been  discovered. 

Southern  British  Columbia  is  full  of 
American  prospectors  and  miners.  They 
find  encouragement  there,  but  find  only  dis- 
couragement in  the  same  identical  mineral 
belt  south  of  the  line,  a  belt  capable  of  the 
same  production  as  the  British  boundary 
camps. 

Conservation  as  practised  is  the  cause  of 
it  all.  In  the  British  camps  along  the  in- 
ternational line  there  is  a  mile  of  good  road 
for  every  square  mile  of  territory.  South 
of  the  line  in  the  forest  reserve  of  the  state 


CONSERVATION   AS   PRACTISED 


TN  Washington  State  alone  decay  annually  kills  a  bil- 
-■-  lion  feet  of  timber  on  reserved  land;  total  sales  are 
7,000,000  feet;  waste  like  that  keeps  lumber  prices  up. 


of  Washington  there  is  a  mile  of  road  for 
every  550  square  miles  of  territory,  and  the 
American  roads  are  generally  inferior  to 
those  of  the  Canadian  province  at  that. 

The  entire  11,684,000  acres  of  national 
forests  of  the  state  of  Washington,  more 
than  a  fourth  of  the  state's  total  area,  con- 
tain exactly  34  miles  of  wagon  road. 

Conservation  as  practised  aids  monopoly 
in  three  ways. 

First — by  failure  to  settle  agricultural  and 
to  develop  mineral  lands  within  the  national 
forests,  leaving  the  timber  to  be  sold  eventu- 
ally to  timber  buyers  rich  enough  to  build 
logging  railroads  into  and  through  the  re- 
serves. If  cultivation  of  the  soil  and  min- 
ing were  encouraged  on  the  lands  in  the 
public  domain  better  adapted  to  those  pur- 
suits than  to  forestry,  there  would  be  trans- 
portation, and  small  lumbering  would  grow 
up,  giving  the  logger  and  mill  man  of  ordi- 
nary means  an  opportunity  to  purchase  gov- 
ernment offerings  of  timber.  As  matters 
stand  only  the  very  wealthy  can  bid  suc- 
cessfully at  such  sales. 

Second — by  withdrawing  great  areas 
from  use  and  refusing  to  sell  and  cut,  the 
market  values  of  Weyerhauser  and  other 
holdings  are  greatly  enhanced. 

The  Olympic  National  Forest,  in  the  state 
of  Washington,  is  an  example. 

This  reserve  is  triangular,  surrounded  on 
three  sides  by  navigable  waters.  Between 
the  boundaries  of  the  national  forest  and 
the  encompassing  Pacific  and  its  inlets  is  a 
row  of  townships  heavily  forested,  and  pri- 
vately owned  by  some  of  the  largest  timber- 
holding  organizations  in  the  country. 

The  withdrawal  of  100,000,000,000  feet  of 
timber  in  the  heart  of  this  peninsula  has 
added  millions  of  dollars  to  the  value  of  the 
outer  private  holdings,  and  in  addition  has 
left  the  owners  of  that  outer  strip  in  a  posi- 
tion to  command  the  whole  when  the  gov- 
ernment finally  offers  it  for  sale. 

Third — by  refusing  to  cut  any  but  a  small 
per  cent,  of  the  annual  increase  or  new 
growth,  and  leaving  hundreds  of  millions  of 
feet  to  rot  each  year  which  should  be  cut, 
the  price  of  lumber  is  maintained  at  a  high 


level  -to  the  disadvantage  of  the  consumer 
and  the  enrichment  of  the  already  wealthy 
timber  holders. 

Who  is  conservation  to  benefit  if  not  the 
masses,  and  if  present  practices  do  not  bene- 
fit the  people  as  a  whole,  but  do  benefit  the 
lumber  barons,  how  can  the  policy  pursued 
be  called  conservation? 

Going  from  the  national  forests  of  Wash- 
ington to  those  of  Alaska  conditions  grow 
worse. 

One  Alaskan,  for  trade  purposes  with  the 
states  last  year,  was  worth  394  Filipinos. 

The  whites  in  Alaska  are  all  Americans 
and  the  natives  are  far  less  an  alien  race 
than  the  natives  of  the  Philippines,  but  we 
are  making  aliens  of  the  Alaskans  and  little 
brothers  of  the  aborigines  of  our  far-off 
Pacific  Islands. 

Alaska  with  nearly  600,000  square  miles 
of  area  has  nearly  27,000,000  acres  of  na- 
tional forests.  Of  this  total  one-third  is 
treeless,  and  another  third  sparsely  covered 
with  a  worthless  and  stunted  growth.  Of 
the  Chugach  forest  not  10  per  cent,  is  worth 
the  expense  of  administration,  and  that  re- 
serve alone  covers  more  than  11,000,000 
acres. 

The  Copper  River  &  Northwestern  Rail- 
road, from  Cordova  to  Kennecott,  197  miles, 
is  built  through  the  Chugach  forest,  but  it 
was  found  cheaper  to  import  ties  and  piling 
from  Puget  Sound  than  to  use  the  trees 
along  the  right  of  way,  which  have  neither 
strength  nor  life,  being  brittle  and  decay- 
ing quickly  when  cut  and  used. 

These  facts  have  been  brought  to  the  at- 
tention of  the  authorities  again  and  again, 
but  none  of  the  lands  withdrawn  for  al- 
leged forestry  purposes  has  as  yet  been  re- 
stored to  the  public  domain. 

In  the  Philippine  Islands,  with  116,000 
square  miles,  are  many  fine  forests,  but  up 
to  last  October  no  national  forests  had  been 
created  there. 

Alaska  to-day  consists  of  a  few  towns  and 
mining  camps  governed  by  United  States 
marshals  and  surrounded  by  alien  territory 
on  which  Alaskans  can  venture  as  tres- 
passers only.    It  is  rich  in  every  natural  re- 


PEARSON'S   MAGAZINE 


npHE  Forestry  Bureau  thinks  it  wise  to  perpetuate  forests 

-*-     which  produce  33^  cents  per  year  per  acre  on  land 

which  if  cultivated  would  produce  from  $50  to  $500. 


source,  but  those  resources  are  as  worthless 
as  the  minerals  in  the  moon.  They  can't 
be  touched  by  the  people  who  require 
them. 

Alaska  has  sore  need  of  fuel  for  both  do- 
mestic and  industrial  purposes,  and  because 
it  has  been  denied  the  right  to  cut  its  own 
cord  wood  and  mine  its  own  coal — and  I 
say  "its  own"  advisedly — settlement  and  in- 
dustry have  languished. 

Alaska  belongs  to  the  people  of  Alaska, 
the  men  and  women  who  have  gone  there 
to  settle  and  develop  it.  In  no  other  way 
can  a  citizen  of  any  American  state  ac- 
quire any  interest  in  that  territory. 

Coal  in  the  ground  is  valueless.  In  the 
cellar  or  in  the  bunkers  of  some  railroad  or 
factory  it  is  an  asset,  a  factor  in  human 
progress  and  comfort.  Forests  which  can't 
be  cut  save  under  prohibitive  penalties,  but 
which  may  die  and  decay,  are  productive 
only  of  national  waste. 

Gold  lured  many  souls  to  the  Northland, 
but  only  the  hardy  and  the  brave  remained 
to  permanently  people  that  domain.  Alaska 
has  cost  the  United  States,  original  pur- 
chase price  and  administration,  from  1867 
to  191 1,  $35,816,674.  It  has  produced  in 
minerals,  furs  and  fish  alone  $446,640,984. 
Of  this  more  than  $195,000,000  was  in  vir- 
gin gold.  All  of  this  wealth  has  gone  into 
American  pockets,  a  contribution  to  the 
general  welfare  and  prosperity  of  the  en- 
tire nation. 

National  indifference  to  Alaska  has  be- 
come a  fixed  American  habit.  Looked 
upon  from  the  first  as  folly,  the  country 
is  still  regarded  as  a  place  to  go  and  dig 
gold  from  frozen  muck.  It  is  the  "land 
of  the  frozen  north,"  "ice-clad  Alaska,"  to 
the  multitude,  a  misnomer,  for  which  guilt 
attaches  to  a  few  half-baked  fake  writers 
and  novelists. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  interior  Alaska  is 
no  colder  than  the  two  Dakotas,  Minne- 
sota, Wisconsin  or  eastern  Montana,  and 
the  cold  nowhere  in  that  whole  territory 
is  as  penetrating  and  disagreeable  as  the 
cold  of  Chicago. 

The  finest  berries,  the   crispest  lettuce, 


the  sweetest  cabbage  in  all  the  world,  grow 
along  Cook's  Inlet.  Apples  ripened  this 
year  in  and  around  Dawson,  and  the  farms 
of  the  Klondike  harvested  $30,000  worth 
of  potatoes  in  191 1.  Tomatoes  and  melons 
have  been  matured  for  years  in  the  Tanana, 
and  nowhere  in  all  the  world  do  grasses 
and  flowers  reach  such  luxuriance  of 
growth  and  brilliant  beauty. 

Alaska  is  a  land  of  long  summer  sun- 
shine, of  skies  of  deepest  blue  and  waters 
which  flash  every  jeweled  color  to  the 
ravished  eye.  It  is  a  land  of  plenty  where 
nature  has  been  most  lavish,  where  there 
is  everything  to  grip  the  heart  and  mind 
and  fancy,  and  every  material  thing  neces- 
sary to  make  it  the  habitat  of  civilized 
human  beings. 

It  is  by  far  more  beautiful,  more  hos- 
pitable and  more  inviting  than  the  coast  of 
New  England,  but  Alaska  is  not  gaining 
population. 

In  a  speech  made  on  a  visit  to  Seattle 
after  his  return  from  Africa  Theodore 
Roosevelt  said:  "Alaska  is  capable  of  sup- 
porting a  population  as  great  as  that 
of  the  Scandinavian  peninsula."  Under 
Roosevelt-Pinchot  policies,  however,  the 
time  when  Alaska  will  have  that  popula- 
tion is  far  distant  indeed.  In  1900  the  ter- 
ritory had  63,592  people.  In  1910  it  had 
64,356,  a  gain  of  764  in  the  decade,  or  76.4 
persons  per  year. 

Norway  and  Sweden  in  19 10  had  a  com- 
bined population  of  7,869,139,  so  that 
Alaska  has  to  gain  7,804,783  people  to 
equal  Scandinavia's  present  figure.  Gain- 
ing 76.4  people  per  year  the  time  required 
for  Alaska  to  reach  Scandinavia's  im- 
portance la  point  of  population  is  only 
102,156  years. 

The  fish  are  in  the  sea,  the  minerals  are 
in  the  mountains,  the  qualities  are  in  the 
soil,  the  water  and  the  air  to  support  mil- 
lions of  people;  but  settlement,  the  ac- 
quisition of  lands,  the  right  to  cut  a  tree, 
dig  a  little  coal,  or  do  anything  necessary 
to  self-support  or  human  comfort,  are  so 
restricted  and  abridged  that  Alaska  has 
failed  to  attract  population,  while  at  the 


CONSERVATION   AS   PRACTISED 


T  AND  along  the  International  Line  is  alike;  just  north 
-■— '  of  the  line  last  year  mines  produced  $i  1,000,000;  just 
south  $800,000;   the  south  mineral  land  is  forest  reserve. 


same  time  certain  bleak,  inhospitable  north- 
west Canadian  provinces  to-day  are  fairly 
swarming  with  American  settlers. 

What  is  the  reason  for  this? 

The  interior  department  has  accepted 
some  $300,000  from  American  citizens  for 
coal  lands  in  Alaska.  While  some  of  this 
money  was  paid  in  nearly  a  decade  ago 
there  has  been  neither  an  acre  of  land 
granted  nor  a  dollar  returned. 

But  not  one  coal  claim  in  all  Alaska  has 
been  found  regular  or  free  from  construc- 
tive fraud.  This  is  the  recent  announce- 
ment of  the  interior  department.  In  short 
not  a  single  Alaskan  with  a  coal  claim  has 
been  found  to  be  honest  in  intent.  Each 
and  every  one  is  charged  with  having  en- 
tered into  some  development,  mining  or 
transportation  agreement  with  some  one 
else.  The  law,  as  the  department  inter- 
prets it,  is  that  no  man  can  acquire  a  coal 
claim  unless  he  acquires  it  "for  his  own 
individual  use  and  benefit."  And  "own  in- 
dividual use  and  benefit"  is  capable  of  no 
elasticity.  Nowhere  in  our  statutes  is  there 
another  phrase  so  rigid. 

In  disposing  of  cases  before  the  land 
office  it  is  learned  that  "own  individual  use 
and  benefit"  means  that  each  locator  must 
locate  for  himself,  by  his  own  personal  act 
and  not  under  the  power  of  attorney  law, 
a  federal  statute  applied  to  Alaska,  else  he 
becomes  a  "dummy" ;  that  he  must  pay  for 
the  claim  with  his  own  money,  for  should 
he  borrow  it  he  will  be  charged  by  some 
field  agent  with  conspiring  to  give  some 
one  else  a  share  of  the  "use  and  benefit" ; 
that  he  must  develop  the  mine  himself, 
mine  the  coal  himself,  and  carry  it  to 
market  himself,  on  his  back,  presumably, 
for  should  he  make  a  railroad  company  of 
himself  to  furnish  transportation,  he  is 
charged  with  another  form  of  conspiracy, 
and  that  is  with  a  conspiracy  to  monopo- 
lize and  "bottle  up"  the  field  for  the  bene- 
fit of  himself  as  a  railroad  company. 

In  the  light  of  requirements  for  suc- 
cessful coal  mining  in  a  field  far  removed 
from  markets,  for  there  is  no  market  worth 
mining  for  in  Alaska  alone,  and  the  trans- 


portation of  that  coal  on  any  possible  basis 
of  profit,  the  construction  placed  on  the 
Alaska  coal  land  laws  shows  bad  faith  on 
the  part  of  the  government. 

Immoral  as  that  construction  becomes 
under  analysis  it  is  not  so  dishonest  as  the 
withdrawal  orders  which  followed  the  suc- 
cessful blocking  of  the  entrymen  by  means 
of  these  fraud  charges. 

The  Chugach  forest,  let  it  be  said  here, 
was  created  under  a  false  pretence.  It 
was  not  formed  for  the  purposes  of  for- 
estry; but  to  prevent  private  acquisition  of 
coal  lands  under  any  of  the  existing  pub- 
lic land  laws. 

Classification  of  the  lands  in  that  re- 
serve would  show  greater  agricultural 
areas  than  forest;  greater  glacier  areas 
than  either,  and  mineral  areas  equal'  to 
more  than  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  total 

The  timber  has  no  commercial  value 
from  a  lumbering  standpoint.  A  few  areas 
near  the  coast  contain  pulp  spruce,  but 
these  are  comparatively  small,  and  do  not 
and  never  did  justify  the  huge  blanket 
withdrawal  which  constitutes  the  present 
Chugach  forest. 

In  an  effort  to  include  in  a  reserve  all 
of  the  coal  lands  where  there  was  promise 
of  development,  and  where  locators  were 
attempting  to  acquire  titles,  Mr.  Pinchot 
drew  boundaries  which  excluded  the  only 
timber  worth  while  in  Southern  and  South- 
western Alaska,  and  that  is  the  forest 
growth  on  Cook's  Inlet  just  to  the  west  of 
the  western  limits  of  the  Chugach  forest. 

He  had  no  information  in  his  possession 
touching  forest  growth  in  that  region,  but 
he  was  fully  informed  on  all  coal  land  de- 
velopment on  the  public  domain  within  the 
territory  of  Alaska. 

Alaska  should  have  been  exporting  coal, 
making  coke  and  smelting  ore  at  its  coast 
towns.  Cordova  should  be  as  large  as 
Butte,  but  it  isn't. 

Alaska  is  buying  domestic  fuel  from 
British  Columbia,  paying  from  $17  to  $30 
per  ton,  shipping  copper  ore  to  Tacoma 
where  it  is  smelted  with  coke  from  Aus- 


PEARSON'S    MAGAZINE 


\  LASKA  is  buying  domestic  fuel  from  British  Co- 
^  ^  lumbia  for  from  $17  to  $30  per  ton  while  its 
own  land  is  full   of  coal  which  it  is  not  allowed  to  use. 


tralia,  and  has  lost  population  instead  of 
gaining  in  the  past  five  years.  It  runs  one 
train  a  week  over  its  only  railroad  and  is 
suffering,  as  James  Keeley,  Editor  of  the 
Chicago  Tribune,  said  after  a  visit  there 
last  July,  "not  from  confiscation,  but  from 
suffocation." 

"But,"  says  some  one,  "we  are  going  to 
have  a  coal  land  leasing  law  and  open 
Alaska  and  develop  its  resources." 

A  coal  land  leasing  in  1907  would  have 
accomplished  all  that  could  have  been  done 
under  private  ownership. 

Oil  has  now  supplanted  coal  on  the  Pa- 
cific Coast.  Steamships,  locomotives,  fac- 
tories all  use  it.  Coal  mining  in  both 
Washington  and  British  Columbia  has  de- 
creased as  a  consequence  of  California's 
77,000,000  barrel  annual  oil  production. 
To  compete  with  oil  which  brings  from  30 
to  40  cents  per  barrel  at  the  well,  coal 
prices  must  range  from  90  cents  to  $1.20 
per  ton  at  the  mine,  with  transportation 
facilities  equal  to  those  in  the  oil  fields. 
Alaska  has  no  transportation  facilities 
whatever. 

Now,  who  will  lease  Alaska  coal  lands, 
let  the  terms  be  ever  so  generous  ? 

The  remedy  for  our  conservation  bungle 
is  simple,  and  the  machinery  to  apply  it  is 
a  long-established  and  permanent  adjunct 
of  the  federal  government,  the  Geological 
Survey. 

Classify  the  public  lands.  These  four 
words  contain  the  cure. 

Until  this  is  done,  and  done  thoroughly, 
no  government  land  policy  satisfactory  to 
all  alike  will  be  possible. 

When  this  is  done  agricultural  lands  can 
be  settled  and  used ;  mineral  lands  devel- 
oped and  forest  lands  held  intact  to  per- 
petuate forest  growth  where  forest  growth 
is  the  best  and  most  profitable  crop  for  the 
lands  so  used.  In  short,  when  the  lands 
of  the  public  domain  are  classified  the  res- 
ervations can  be  limited  to  the  purpose 
which  they  purport  to  serve. 

Under  our  past  and  present  policies 
boundaries  have  been  marked  around  huge 
areas  without  proper  or  careful   regard — 


many  times  without  accurate  knowledge — 
of  what  those  areas  contained.  The  result 
is  that  mineral  lands  and  agricultural 
lands  have  been  locked  up  and  withheld 
from  their  proper  use ;  states  deprived  of 
the  benefits  which  would  accrue  from  de- 
velopment; stagnation  has  taken  place  of 
industry  and  activity,  and  wilderness  per- 
petuated where  there  should  be  thriving 
and  productive  communities. 

The  Canadian  provinces  have  worked 
along  land  classification  lines,  and  there  is 
marked  development  north  of  the  bound- 
ary. Those  provinces  are  attracting 
American  settlers  and  American  miners 
and  prospectors  to  the  disadvantage  of  our 
own  northwestern  states. 

British  Columbia  is  Canada's  great  for- 
est and  mineral  province.  British  Colum- 
bia does  not  sell  its  timber  lands.  It  leases 
them.  Twenty-one  years  is  the  tenure,  and 
some  of  the  largest  holders  of  "timber 
limits"  in  that  province,  as  the  leaseholds 
are  called,  are  American  lumbermen. 

If  our  own  public  lands  policy  were  as 
sensible  the  tide  of  American  immigration 
into  Canada  would  be  diverted  to  our  own 
unused,  imdeveloped  domain. 

Conservation  can  be  made  businesslike. 
It  can  conserve,  which  it  is  not  doing  now. 
The  state  of  Washington  has  the  proof, 
and  it  lies  in  its  own  wise  administration 
of  its  own  lands.  Washington  has  a  $10,- 
000,000  permanent  school  fund  and  still 
has  in  its  possession  80  per  cent,  of  its 
granted  lands. 

Under  the  ownership  of  the  state  are  ag- 
ricultural, timber,  mineral,  tide  lands  and 
oyster  beds.  These  lands  are  classified  and 
disposed  of  both  by  sale  and  lease.  Fed- 
eral reserves  within  the  state  are  nearly 
five  times  the  area  of  the  state  holdings, 
but  the  federal  gross  revenues  from  nearly 
12,000,000  acres  of  lands  in  Washington 
are  barely  i  per  cent,  of  the  state's  reve- 
nues from  2,500,000  acres. 

When  conservation  really  conserves  the 
West  will  be  ready  to  believe  in  it  and  to 
support  it.  It  must  first  get  on  a  business 
basis. 


>^?J 


'W- 


